Gentleman, – A celebrity from Hollywood has upset the Green Party through his statement that it is on the verge of inflicting significant harm on the environment due to its haste in passing the Planning and Development Bill 2023. This bill permits planning requests for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminals (“Mark Ruffalo intervenes in Irish politics, criticising Green Party for potential environmental harm”, News, 9th October).
While the Green Party’s objections carry some weight, it is peculiar that the bill only allows for necessary LNG terminals for Ireland’s energy security if they aren’t commercial.
Such odd, yet predictable, results are a common occurrence when the stated national goal is emissions’ reduction, but it’s universally understood that this is only possible if affordable, reliable energy supply can be guaranteed.
An efficiently formulated Bill that endorses emissions’ reduction while providing affordable and reliable energy would undoubtedly cover all feasible approaches to attain this goal.
Conversely, this piece of legislation explicitly refuses to permit power generation in Ireland through nuclear fission, which is the EU’s prime source of clean electricity, whilst allowing the import of electricity generated by nuclear power from Britain and France. More worryingly, the Bill makes no mention of utilising Irish nuclear fission for the generation of hydrogen, heat, or other utilities, highlighting a lack of strategic planning in some aspects of this Planning Bill.
Such oversights could have been circumvented if there was a thoughtful deliberation about the inclusion of Clause 182 which is decidedly unsuitable and needs to be deleted.
A thorough evaluation of the pros and cons of delivering a clean energy system with and without nuclear power situated in Ireland should then take place.
With that, we can be confident that we have deliberated all feasible alternatives before proceeding with a clean energy framework, which will not only be the most costly but could also be Ireland’s most significant project. – Yours faithfully,
DENIS DUFF,
Greystones,
Co Wicklow.